See here for details.
I have two unpopulated PCBs. I am hoping to assemble one over the Christmas period. If it works OK, I would be happy to sell my spare PCB for what it cost me to obtain (£38.61) plus postage. Do note that this is entirely unpopulated. There is a small amount of surface mount soldering to do; most notably the ATMEGA2560 which comes in a 100-pin TQFP package. You will also need to have the appropriate programmer for the ATMEGA.
I would also be happy to sell this as a fully populated and programmed board, again for no more than BOM cost plus postage. I will not have a precise cost for this until I have ordered all the components. But I think it will be about £210.
Stephan, who designed the board, will not ship to the UK, post Brexit. Boards are available from the official UK distributor here. The bare PCB costs £42.95 (so not much more than it cost me) and the board with a pre-programmed ATMEGA costs £85.95 (compared to a BOM cost of £59.27). There is no option for a fully populated board. Given the intended use of the board, it would be difficult to conceive of someone who would want one, but felt uncomfortable assembling the through-hole components. I suppose the advantage in a fully populated board would be to reduce the hassle of sourcing all the parts.
Please let me know if you are interested in my spare board.
Retro Chip Tester Professional
Retro Chip Tester Professional
There is so much wonder in the universe; why should you want to imagine that there is more?
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
You don't need a TQFP adaptor to program these things, you program them on the board (there's a programming header, so you need something like an AVRDUDE or ATATMEL-ICE - which seems to be more than 3x the price it was in 2018
).Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
You can program it with this. (This is the device used and recommended by the developer.)
There is so much wonder in the universe; why should you want to imagine that there is more?
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
That be an order of magnitude cheaper than this! https://uk.farnell.com/microchip/atatme ... dp/2407173
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
Very nice project, and lucky for me that I ended up in the country of the creators of this tester, so no brexit complications for me.
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
This may be interesting, the most expensive components on the main board can seemingly be replaced by the SMD version.
The cheapest Omron G6K-2P / Y relays I could find cost about £8+ each whereas the SMD version, G6K-2F-Y cost about 75p each.
Using tweezers to bend the legs a bit will get them in the holes, however there's only about 1-1.5 mm of leg in the hole so needs careful soldering.
Should work, hopefully!
These parts would need to be taped to the PCB for soldering using kapton tape or similar as they've got short legs.
The cheapest Omron G6K-2P / Y relays I could find cost about £8+ each whereas the SMD version, G6K-2F-Y cost about 75p each.
- Omron 5V relay SMD version
- Legs bent
These parts would need to be taped to the PCB for soldering using kapton tape or similar as they've got short legs.
Last edited by sP1d3r on Tue Apr 11, 2023 8:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
I've made some progress with my chip tester PCB but I haven't yet found any details of the polyfuse required, other than 1100mA.
Does anyone know the voltage rating for this part?
The recommendation for the capacitors on the DC-DC power module are 25V or higher, does this apply to the polyfuse?
Does anyone know the voltage rating for this part?
The recommendation for the capacitors on the DC-DC power module are 25V or higher, does this apply to the polyfuse?
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
This is what I used.
There is so much wonder in the universe; why should you want to imagine that there is more?
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
Thanks JudgeBeeb, I noticed that the BOM and manuals show PCBs with substantial polyfuses but as the maximum voltage input is 12V through the seperate voltage input terminals behind the DC-DC module, I thought that a polyfuse rated 1100mA at 16V could be used, rather than the 30V types.
I may get a couple of fuses to test both, perhaps.
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
I think there is a pre-populated BOM for uploading to Reichelt and that is the part in that BOM (albeit I ordered from elsewhere).
There is so much wonder in the universe; why should you want to imagine that there is more?
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
I finally managed to find 1N4733 diodes that are usable, I've so far tried 4 sellers on both eBay and Aliexpress but the majority of the diodes I received had a Zener voltage of 4.5-4.6V but I then found an eBay seller in China that sent me a load that were 100% usable.
- 1N4733A 1W Zener diode testing
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
Has anyone managed to program the 2560 with a Tiny ISP programmer?
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
The RCTP manual states that the USBtinyISP won't work (page 174 of the current version (2023-03-25) or page 169 in the previous version (2022-12-28)).
I used this and programming was very straightforward.
There is so much wonder in the universe; why should you want to imagine that there is more?
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
This isn't the programmer referred to in the manual,
- Tiny ISP programmer
- Reverse side
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
I've now programmed the firmware using Avrdudess 2.14 and an Arduino Uno as ISP.
This went seemingly awfully at first because the Uno wouldn't write and verify in the same operation, the verify only got so far before the programmer stopped responding.
However, resetting the Uno and verifying separately worked and it was only when the verify worked that I realised that I had the contrast turned up too high on the display and it looked as if nothing was happening!
All I need to do now is some testing.
This went seemingly awfully at first because the Uno wouldn't write and verify in the same operation, the verify only got so far before the programmer stopped responding.
However, resetting the Uno and verifying separately worked and it was only when the verify worked that I realised that I had the contrast turned up too high on the display and it looked as if nothing was happening!
- Firmware programmed.
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
I've tried a 4116 DRAM which uses 12V, 5V and -5V which tested OK so the DC-DC module works OK.
- 4116 DRAM
Re: Retro Chip Tester Professional
This ISP programmer is actually not a USBTiny ISP programmer, it's called a FabISP programmer and was developed at MIT:
https://fab.cba.mit.edu/content/archive ... ts/fabisp/
It can be used without a driver on Linux, on Windows it needs a specially-built driver and as on Linux identifies as a USBTiny.
I might see if it can program the 2560 if I assemble another RCTP, it's different to USBTiny programmers that aren't able to program 256K AVR chips within 20 minutes.
The current version 2.3 can program 1.8V targets, see:
https://github.com/abardagjy/fabisp